Theo on tech · June 19th

Karamo Brown, famous for his pep talks on Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” has jumped into the wellness and AI space with his new app, Kē. After spending a year and a half focusing on his own journey—from fitness and nutrition to meditation, sobriety, relationships, and personal growth—Brown wants to help others do the same.  Kē offers […]

Plague swept through groups of hunter-gatherers in southeastern Siberia 5,500 years ago, leaving dozens dead in its wake—with DNA from Yersinia pestis bacteria still trapped inside their teeth. University of Oxford ancient DNA researcher Ruairidh Macleod and his colleagues recently sequenced the telltale bacterial DNA in teeth from plague victims at four ancient cemeteries in the area around Russia’s Lake Baikal. The tragedy that befell these communities is now the earliest known plague outbreak, courtesy of the oldest strain of Y. pestis ever sequenced. Unearthing a new backstory for the plague Until recently, scientists who study the evolution of diseases have held two fairly solid ideas about the origins of plague, the disease caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria. It's a scourge so awful that it has gone down in history as not just a plague but the plague. The first idea is that the earliest strains didn't have the right genetic traits to be really lethal. And the second is that the plague first began menacing humans when the first farmers settled in densely packed towns alongside rats and domestic animals. Read full article

In May, the federal government announced without warning that it would take apart a network of ocean monitoring systems that it had spent over $350 million to build. No reason was given for the decision to shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), but suspicion immediately focused on the network's role in tracking climate change. But the OOI also provides data that's useful for weather forecasting and fisheries management, leading to widespread opposition. Today, it appears that the opposition has won, as the government will announce that it's reversing the decision. The big remaining question is how much damage the OOI took during the intervening month. As of now, there is no formal statement available from the federal government. However, The New York Times reports that the decision will be announced later today, and Ars received a statement from Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, indicating that the decision has been made.

WALLOPS ISLAND, Virginia—Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What's more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget? Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. "They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, 'Yeah, let’s do it,'" said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division. That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst's Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift's orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.

So Apple's making a change to the way Sign in with Apple and iCloud+ Hide My Email work. They're moving to a single domain, private.icloud.com, for all new email addresses generated by these features. This means that instead of having different domains for each, like privaterelay.appleid.com and icloud.com, everything will be under private.icloud.com.

The existing addresses on the old domains will still work, and emails will keep getting forwarded to users without any issues. Some people are worried that this change might make Hide My Email less effective, since some services might just block the private.icloud.com domain to try to get users to give up their real email addresses.

But it's also possible to see this as a way to filter out services that don't respect user privacy. If a service won't accept an email address from private.icloud.com, it's likely because they want to do something with the user's actual email address that they shouldn't be doing. This change could end up being a useful way to identify which services are prioritizing user privacy and which ones aren't.

It's also worth noting that this change is happening later this summer, so we'll have to wait and see how it all plays out. But for now, it seems like Apple is trying to simplify things and make it easier for users to keep their email addresses private.

So there's this new Mac app that uses AI to predict what you're typing and suggests a few words ahead of time. It's really well-designed and integrates seamlessly with MacOS, even using the same font as the app you're typing in. The suggestions appear right in line with your text, which is pretty clever. What's interesting is that it uses on-device models, so it respects your privacy and doesn't send any data online.

The app is called Cotypist, and it's surprisingly good at predicting what you want to type. You can accept the suggestions by hitting Tab, or just keep typing if you don't want to use them. It's a pretty simple but effective system.

I think what's notable about Cotypist is that it could be really useful for people who do a lot of repetitive writing, like answering emails or writing in a second language. It might save them a lot of time and effort. However, for someone who enjoys writing, like the person who wrote about Cotypist, it might be more of a distraction than a help.

Cotypist offers a free tier with limited use, as well as paid tiers with more features. If you're curious, you can try it out for free for 30 days to see if it's something that would work for you. It's definitely an interesting tool, and it might be worth checking out even if you're not sure if you'd use it.

So Verizon just launched a new ad campaign using the Austin Powers characters, and what's interesting is that they're basically acknowledging their past business practices were, well, not great. The ad features Dr. Evil's son Scott saying that Verizon used to be like other phone companies, but not anymore, because they've gotten rid of activation and upgrade fees.

This is kind of a big deal, because it's a major carrier essentially admitting that their old ways of doing business were unfair. I've been a Verizon customer for a while, and I've always thought their service was good, but their fees were definitely a pain. Like, I got charged a $30 upgrade fee last year when I bought a new iPhone, which was frustrating.

It's worth noting that Verizon is actually making some changes to how they do business. They're dropping those extra fees, which could make a big difference for customers. It's not just about saving money, though - it's also about feeling like you're not getting taken advantage of by your phone company.

The ad itself might not be hilarious, but the fact that Verizon is being so upfront about their past mistakes is pretty surprising. It's a sign that they're trying to change their image and be more customer-friendly. We'll see if it actually works, but it's definitely an interesting move.

Notably, unlike other apps that might just try to pull you away from your phone, Mivo lets the user decide if they want to continue, encouraging users to become more aware of how and why they’re using it instead.

Bernie Sanders is pushing a bill that would slap a one‑time fifty‑percent tax on the stock of any AI company that pulls in more than two hundred million dollars a year. The tax would flow straight into a new sovereign wealth fund, and because the trigger is tied to revenue rather than market cap, even fast‑growing startups would be caught once they hit that threshold.

The idea is to pool the proceeds into a fund that could swell to around seven trillion dollars. From there, the plan is to pay out a modest dividend to every American—roughly a thousand dollars a year at a five‑percent payout rate—while also earmarking a chunk for health care, education and housing programs.

If the legislation clears, the biggest impact would be a shift in ownership: a sizable slice of the AI pie would move from private shareholders to the public purse, giving everyday people a direct financial stake in an industry that’s otherwise dominated by a handful of tech giants.

A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake. The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive US government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in US military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated. In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks,” Bloomberg reported. The US government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.